Goats have gone: we had them here through mid-morning on Friday. Christine fell a little in love with them, niece and nephew adored them, sister plans to enroll her kids in 4H so they can raise kids. I have five pounds of buckwheat seed to broadcast as ground cover, weed suppressant, green "manure."

In Tree-of-heaven news the goats ate the bark off half one of the trees, but didn't girdle it as well as they went after one of the tulip poplars. A chainsaw purchase is tempting, although we have various family members offering to loan theirs. Christine's sister's husband says we can keep his for him: would that make us Chainsaw Godmothers? (We think that would be a great name for a band.)

Also, in tree-of-heaven news, several of the trees of heaven ARE NOT. They are hickory or, as one of the streets on the way to my sister's reminds me, mockernut. The green nuts under the tree were a giveaway.

I think i've been fighting off some summer cold, although "Did i inhale bits of poison ivy?" and "Hmm, i haven't been taking my iron and asthma inhaler" have presented as potential counters. We've had power outages: Wednesday evening we lost power and didn't get it back until midday on Thursday.